Welcome to this webpage which provides an overview of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Department of Orthopedic Surgery with its dedicated faculty, staff and trainees. We are strongly committed to clinical care, teaching, research and service activities. We are partnered with Prisma Health to provide superior patient care in addition to providing educational opportunities for undergraduate students, medical students, residents and fellows and supporting a research infrastructure to advance healthcare for generations to come.
The Department of Orthopedic Surgery has approximately 40 physicians and numerous advanced practice providers. We provide advanced levels of care for all Orthopedic subspecialties including Adult Reconstruction, Sports Medicine, Hand and Upper Extremity, Spine, Foot and Ankle, Pediatrics and Adult Trauma. We also have a partnership with the University of South Carolina Department of Family and Preventive Medicine to provide Primary Care Sports Medicine care. Given our roles in education and research, we are on the forefront of “cutting edge” medicine.
Our Adult Reconstruction team provides the highest levels of care in hip and knee reconstruction including the use of patient-specific navigation and robotic technology to offer patients the most modern options for their joint reconstructions. Our Sports Medicine team offers advanced “minimally invasive” surgical techniques for the treatment of shoulder, elbow, knee, hip and ankle injuries.
Our Primary Care Sports Medicine physicians offer advanced nonoperative treatment of musculoskeletal injuries. This includes the use of the most modern biologic treatments such as platelet rich plasma and stem cell injections. This team also specializes in the treatment of Sport Related Concussions. We have the largest Sports Medicine network in the state of South Carolina, offering care for athletes from over 35 high schools and numerous colleges including taking care of the University of South Carolina Gamecocks. We have a large network of athletic trainers who provide exceptional care for our student-athletes at all levels of performance. We also have a nationally accredited Athletic Training Residency Program which offers an opportunity for athletic trainers to further their awareness in all aspects of sports medicine and to be able to work in a variety of clinical, surgical, research and educational settings.
Our Sports division has a Sports Performance Center and MAP (Motion Analysis and Performance) Lab that allows us to take injured and non-injured athletes to levels of performance that they never believed were attainable without these higher levels of analysis and training. Our Hand and Upper Extremity team can care for any level of injury or disease involving the hand, forearm, elbow, arm and shoulder. This includes a physician dedicated to electrodiagnostic studies for evaluation of neurologic injuries.
Our Spine team care cares for the most complicated injuries and disease to the spine. They offer care for severe traumatic injuries, while also providing modern “minimally-invasive” surgical techniques for care of patients with severe spine injuries with small incisions. Advanced imaging located within our hospitals allows us to offer these advanced procedures to our patients. Our Spine team also includes physicians dedicated to in-office interventions such as injections to alleviate devastating neck and back pain.
Our Foot and Ankle team have also mastered minimally invasive techniques for injuries and pathology of the foot and ankle, being able to perform surgeries through tiny incisions to correct deformities of the foot and ankle that traditionally required risky large incisions. These techniques have revolutionized foot and ankle surgery by alleviating pain and deformity while significantly reducing risk to the patient. The Foot and Ankle service also offer a multidisciplinary service including Orthopedic Surgery, Infectious Disease, Internal Medicine and Vascular Surgery that provide care for diabetic foot wounds. Diabetes, and the complications that result from this disease, is a devastating problem in the state of South Carolina given the high prevalence of diabetes in its population. We provide a tram of experts to promptly treat foot wounds in these patients that often lead to saving limbs that previously required amputations.
We have the only Pediatric Surgery program in the Midlands of South Carolina. This team treats all injuries and diseases that affect our children from birth to their transition to adulthood. This includes care of severe spinal deformities including scoliosis. Our Adult Trauma team handles the most severe injuries that occur in the Midlands, including operative and nonoperative care for the most severe pelvis and hip injuries. We partner with the University of South Carolina Department of Orthopedic Surgery in the Upstate to offer the highest levels of Oncology care for our patients that have cancer and infection-related musculoskeletal conditions.
Our Orthopedic Surgery Residency Program trains twenty residents per year as they advance from medical school graduates to practicing Orthopedic Surgeons. We have been training residents in the art and science of Orthopedic Surgery since 1945 here in Columbia, SC. Our residency program has seen our graduates get accepted by the very best fellowships in the country and has seen its graduates accept jobs in both academic and private practices across the country. We are proud to graduate residents that have the highest levels of surgical skills combined with the empathy and social skills that are necessary to become great physicians.
Our Research program has seen tremendous growth over the last several years led by our Research Director, Dr. Ben Jackson, the Kimbrough-Moore Endowed Professor of Research. We offer a one-year, full time, research fellowship for current medical students or recent medical school graduates to offer them a chance to delve into the world of Orthopedic research. Our students in this program have gone on to publish numerous studies from their year in this program. The research team has received significant funding for their projects including a multi-million dollar grant from the Department of Defense to try to find solutions to limit stress fractures in military recruits. Our Orthopedic Department has one of the most robust programs in the country to collect Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). The data accumulated will give us the opportunity to provide the highest levels of care for our patients and advance research to focus on what truly matters, operative and nonoperative care that improves our patients’ lives from their own perspective. This focuses our interventions on what truly matters to us as a department which is simply to makes our patients better.
We also are highly engaged in professional organizations locally, regionally and nationally. In recent years, our physicians have served as presidents of the South Carolina Orthopedic Association and the Southern Orthopedic Association and have members who are actively involved in national and international organizations that represent every subspecialty in orthopedics and musculoskeletal care. This includes representatives on the Board of Councilors for the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery. We also have a physician who was elected to the Herodicus Society, an invitation-only collection of some of the elite sports medicine physicians in the country.
We appreciate the opportunities given to us to care for our patients and are strongly committed to clinical care, teaching, research and service activities.
Sincerely,
Chris Mazoue, M.D. - Chair of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery